SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Now a story about a wild animal making a comeback in Appalachia - not B.J. Leiderman, who writes our theme music. Roxy Todd of member station Radio IQ takes us to the top of a former strip mine in southwest Virginia, where the elk mating season is attracting tourists. Why don't they just give them some privacy?
ROXY TODD, BYLINE: The best time to see elk is sunrise and sunset, when they're most active. So one morning, just as the sun crests over the mountains, a busload of tourists stops to take in the view at the western edge of Virginia's Appalachian coalfields.
SHARON PRESSLER: I thought it was going to be that one right there.
TODD: Among them, Sharon Pressler from Chatham, Virginia. She's taking photos with her son and husband.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAMERA)
PRESSLER: This is, like, our third tour out here. We're seeing a herd of what looks like a lot of bachelor bulls.
TODD: She's looking at a dozen elk quietly grazing about 100 yards away. Elk used to roam throughout the Eastern United States, but hunting in the 1800s killed them off. Then in the 1990s, Kentucky brought in elk from Western states and reintroduced them into the Eastern mountains. In 2012, Kentucky started giving Virginia some of their elk. Now the herds have more than tripled, and there are at least 250 elk in Southwest Virginia. Leon Boyd remembers when the Elk arrived.
LEON BOYD: I grew up right here. So all of this was kind of like grounds that I hunted on as a kid for rabbit and squirrel and stuff.
TODD: Today, Boyd is an elk tour guide. His full-time job is working for a drilling company. He's also been volunteering to make this land better for elk. Mining companies had planted fast-growing invasive plants over their strip mines once they were through with them. These plants, like autumn olive, are not good for elk. So Boyd and other volunteers spent years pulling them up and replacing them with native grasses.
BOYD: And now, with just a little bit of effort and a little bit of work, we see the abundance of wildlife.
TODD: You can also hear it. On the last tour stop, a dozen small mountain ridges are below us, and there's another herd of elk in the distance. We hear their mating calls, a male bugling.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELK BUGLING)
TODD: It's pretty quiet because my microphone is far away. Here's a better recording of an elk in Virginia by a videographer with the state's Wildlife Department.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELK BUGLING)
TODD: That sound has been absent from Virginia for over 150 years. Boyd says he really loves bringing people close to hearing it.
BOYD: We find ourselves sometimes out here with folks that may be battling some issues in life, whether it be cancer or something else. And you give them that moment of some relief to forget about what's going on. I think that's the most rewarding part of it.
TODD: This elk tour was one of the last of the year. They'll restart in the spring, when elk calves are being born.
For NPR News, I'm Roxy Todd in Buchanan County, Virginia. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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